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they are a nice idea but...

I don't know if this is just true in my household, but my husband is a real sucker for a gadget. Having experienced the whole "body jet in showers thing" in a rather nice hotel once, when we were refitting our bathroom he decided that our bathroom needed the space age treatment.

The Aqualisa Body Jet pack fits onto Quartz Digital shower that I have already reviewed elsewhere on this site, and is for both the exposed and hidden valve model. The picture above shows the unit fitted to the shower, it's the two round nozzles and extra dial. Cost wise, you are looking at an extra £80-120 on top of the price of the shower, prices vary quite considerably. The unit does fit neatly onto the shower and manages to look like part of it rather than an "add on" in my opinion. The whole thing is made of plastic but nicely finished and the dials and jets are solid and seem to be of a good build quality and is installed generally in conjuction with the shower though it could be retro-fitted.

The body jet delivers a horizontal jet of water, each side delivers 3 jets, of 3 bits, there are 9 holes in all in each unit. The whole jets can be swivelled to change the direction when they are in use. The dial has four settings: shower only, shower more pressured then shower, jets more pressured than shower and jets only, ie shower off- it's more simple than it sounds; basically the jets are powered on and off by the dial, the shower has seperate controls with the ability to "boost" supply, as already described in my shower review, if doing so when using the jets you are consuming another 5l per min or so. By use of the controls you can control direction and pressure of the water you wash with.

Sounds great?

Well yes and no. I do use the jets from time to time, and they can be quite pleasant when aimed at your shoulders after a long day, however I do find they have some downsides. Firstly, and this is the point that I can't get past, no matter how you look at it, the jets are, when fitted, at what can only be described as "nipple height", if you are average height as I am. This might be down to personal preference but for me there's something rather wrong at aiming water at high pressure at your bits. You can adjust the height of the jets and angle slightly but certainly on the exposed valve model which fits onto the ceiling the height of the unit isn't really adjustable, which it would be with the concealed valve model. My advice if fitting the latter would be to think carefully about the height you fit the jets if this is likely to worry you.

Another thing that bothers me slightly is that the jet unit is in hard plastic, unlike the shower head where the jet holes are encased with soft rubber so that build up can be cleaned, I would think in a hard water area the jets would be prone to clogging rather quickly, ours did somewhat until we fitted a water softener to our system.

The other thing I find rather strange with this unit is that when you turn it on it is cold for a couple of seconds, ergo if you have started your shower already and are standing under lovely warm water you can get a bit of a shock quite frankly, especially if,as already mentioned, it is directed at your more delicate areas. If you can get past this the jets do work well and deliver a good amount of spray, and are quite handy if you want to have a quick shower and not get your hair wet.

In reality I could quite happily live without having these jets as an add on, the shower itself is adequate for me, even though my husband did "sell" them to me as costing less than the extra we saved when doing up our bathroom by taking out the old shower unit and disposing of it ourselves. These are "OK" but they are not a huge enhancement of the shower experience for me, they are a nice idea but that's all - but if you like gadgets you too might just find them rather tempting, and certainly using them is an experience you are unlikely to forget!